


music man.

by katarama



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Musicians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 16:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5974198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You should talk to them about it, when they come to get the music from you,” Malia suggests.  </p><p>Kira blushes and puts the music back in its proper order, shoving it back in the folder.  “I couldn’t.  It’s one thing looking at it, but-”</p><p>“You have a music crush on them,” Malia says sagely.  Kira hates her a little bit.  “It’s okay, it happens to the best of us."</p>
            </blockquote>





	music man.

Kira spends a lot of time in the fine arts building.  Between Allison and Lydia working on their final showings for their art classes where they have to present their portfolios and Kira’s own tendency to lose track of time in the practice rooms, it’s a miracle she hasn’t decided to just sleep there, too.  She knows all the regulars; she hangs out with Danny a lot, since they’re in jazz band together, and Malia’s constantly borrowing and learning new instruments, though she always goes back to her drums.  She really likes her school’s program.  The people are pretty eclectic but generally nice, and Deaton is a pretty chill department head.  As long as no one breaks anything belonging to the university and no one gets caught doing anything against the university rules, he pretty much lets them do what they want.  

The practice rooms are all over the building, but the main cluster is down in the basement.  Most of them have a favorite; Kira definitely does.  She likes the room on the far end of the right side of the hallway because it has the biggest windows and the heating generally works in the winter.  Malia likes the one across the hall and one door down because it’s one of the bigger rooms, and there’s space for whatever instruments she could be using on a given day, and the recording equipment, when Deaton lets her rent it out.  Some of the rooms have people swapping in and out; none of them can _technically_  call dibs, though most of the rooms have specific people using them during specific times on a regular basis.

There’s only one room that Kira rarely sees open.  It’s the biggest room because it has a grand piano in it, and the piano students are always fighting to snap it up.  It’s the only practice room that requires sign-ups posted on the door, so no one takes more than their fair share of time.  Kira doesn’t know most of the people coming in and out; the only pianist she really interacts with all that much is in jazz band.  She and her friends always check the list as they walk by, though, to try and spot familiar faces.  There are a lot of repeat names, but Kira doesn’t know most of them.

There’s one S. Stilinski that she and her friends joke about every time, though.  They book the room every day from 4 AM to 6 AM, signing the list, “S. Stilinski,” or, sometimes, “S. Stilinski and S. McCall” which, in Kira’s opinion, is even more ridiculous, because there are _two_ people with probably too much dedication.  She knows a lot of the music people take night classes and keep weird hours, but Kira can’t imagine even a little bit being awake and wanting to play the piano at 4 AM.  

Kira doesn’t think much of S. Stilinski.  She knows there’s no Stilinski in any of her courses, and they’re not friends with any of her friends.  They’re a cautionary tale, to her and her friends, an, “At least we aren’t S. Stilinski or S. McCall right now.”  Kira giggles along and doesn’t linger on the thought.

Until the sheet music appears.

She sees it outside Stilinski’s usual practice room.  Kira’s waiting outside in the hallway, pacing and working through fingerings in her head to test her memorization, when she sees a bright orange folder.  She peeks inside it to see if it’s someone she knows, or if she should turn it in to the lost and found.  There’s no name on the folder itself, but inside there are sheets and sheets and sheets of lined music paper with tiny little notes and time signatures and slurs scrawled in.  

Each set of packets is labeled with a number at the top, and some are more complete than others.  Some pieces look like they’re a work in progress, but that the final versions will be for full orchestra.  There are parts written in as side notes in the margins, a few pages of bass and treble clef with the familiar “S. McCall” denotation, “piano” written in small, cramped letters beneath it.  “S. Stilinski, violin” shows up the most, sometimes as parts in the other pieces, sometimes as a solo part.  There’s always a small asterisk next to his name, when it appears, which raises as many questions for Kira as it answers.  

The handwriting is familiar, though.  Kira glances at the schedule on the door and only has to take a moment to realize the handwriting matches the names scrawled in from 4-6 AM.

“Holy shit,” Kira says, and she sets the folder back down where she found it.  She doesn’t know if Stilinski is coming back for it or not, and she doesn’t know if she should turn it in.  On the one hand, it seems irresponsible to just leave this music lying around.  Someone who is less considerate than Kira could take it, and all of S. Stilinski’s hard work could be lost.

The person in her practice room opens the door and heads out into the hallway, so Kira has to make a decision fast.  She rips out a sheet of notebook paper and fishes a pen out of her backpack, scrawling a note and leaving it on the table.

“S. Stilinski:

I have your music, I saw it sitting here and I didn’t want anyone to steal it.  I’ll be in practice room A until 10:30 PM if you wanna come grab it.

Kira”

She leaves the note and picks the overstuffed folder back up, carrying it in one hand and her trumpet in the other.  If Stilinski doesn’t see the note and come find her, she can hang on to it and write him a new note.  She’d leave her cell phone number, but she doesn’t trust anyone in the music department who she isn’t already friends with to not call her high talking about Vivaldi or Count Basie or Ke$ha at 3 AM.  Or to do something even worse with it.

So Kira waits.  She waits and she watches the door while she practices, trying not to play too loudly, just in case S. Stilinski knocks.  The time goes by, though, and there’s nothing, and at 10:45, she finally gives up.

“S. Stilinski,

 ~~I have your music, I saw it sitting here and I didn’t want anyone to steal it.  I’ll be in practice room A until 10:30 PM if you wanna come grab it.~~   So, you didn’t come get it.  I have it still, though.  Deaton left for the day, or I would’ve passed it along to him.  I’ll be around in the lobby most of tomorrow if you want to find me.

Kira”

Satisfied, Kira walks back to her room for the night, the folder tucked into her backpack for safe keeping.

* * *

 

“Wait, you found music written by S. Stilinski?  They’re a real person?” Malia asks, grabbing at the folder.  She flips through it, pausing on a page that’s entirely clarinet.  She taps her fingers against the chair, and Kira can see her itching to go grab her instrument and work through it.  Malia has perfect pitch, and Kira can hear her quietly humming the part under her breath.

“You probably shouldn’t be snooping too much,” Kira tentatively suggests, and Malia flips back a few more pages.  “Hey look,” she says, shoving the packet of paper in Kira’s face.  “There’s one with a trumpet solo.”

“A lot of band music has trumpet solos,” Kira points out, trying to stay strong.  

“There’s a trumpet and violin duet, after it.”  Malia grins and holds the paper closer, and Kira sighs, gingerly taking it from her.

“I can’t believe you’ve had this for three days and you haven’t looked through it,” Malia says.  “There’s so much of it.”

“It’s not mine to snoop in,” Kira says.

“It’s good, though,” Malia points out.  “It’s good stuff.  There’s not enough dissonance, but this is shit I’d want to play.”

“There’s never enough dissonance for you,” Kira responds, but she’s not really paying attention anymore.  She feels a little dirty looking at S. Stilinski’s music without their permission; for all Kira knows, this is something very private that she’s putting her grubby little hands all over.  Malia’s right, though.  She scans down the page, reading the trumpet part and seeing how it interacts with the rest of the brass section.  She flips through to the next page, and then the page after that, and see that it ends abruptly, in the middle of a bar.

“It’s good,” Kira agrees.  “And there’s no name in the margin, just trumpet.”

“You should talk to them about it, when they come to get it from you,” Malia suggests.  

Kira blushes and puts the music back in its proper order, shoving it back in the folder.  “I couldn’t.  It’s one thing looking at it, but-”

“You have a music crush on them,” Malia says sagely.  Kira hates her a little bit.  “It’s okay, it happens to the best of us.  “There’s a dude in one of my classes who plays piano, Scott, and he honestly could play heart and soul over and over again for the rest of his life and I’d still want his fingers in my cunt.”

“Pretty sure that’s different from a music crush,” Kira teases.  “I’m pretty sure that’s just you having a high sex drive.”

“Probably,” Malia agrees.  “But he plays piano well, too, so it counts for both.”

“I don’t know anything about Stilinski,” Kira says.  “Except that they’re harder to get ahold of than I expected.  I don’t think they even saw my note.  It’s still there, just with a few dicks drawn on it.”

“Maybe you need to go to them, instead of the other way around,” Malia suggests, and that… actually isn’t such a bad idea.

Except for the part where it’s 4 AM and Kira is trudging to the fine arts building.

The campus is eerily dark and empty, the only light coming from the moon and the streetlights.  The fine arts building is even darker and emptier.  Kira has to swipe in, and the lights switching on automatically as she walks freaks her out more than she’d like to admit.  There’s not a soul in the building, that she can see.  

At least, not until she gets down to the practice rooms.

The light in the hallway is on, and the door to the S. Stilinski (no S. McCall today) practice room is closed.  Kira can’t hear through the soundproofing to know for certain that they’re in there, but she takes the plunge and knocks.

She almost starts to lose faith.  No one answers for a solid two minutes.  She tentatively knocks again.  She’s about ready to turn around and try another day when the door swings open abruptly to reveal the single biggest mess of paper Kira has ever seen, and, standing in front of it all, a tall guy with a button nose and rumpled brown hair.

“S. Stilinski?”

“Stiles,” he says.  “I don’t know you.”

“Oh.  I’m, uh.  I’m Kira, I’m the one who left the note?  I don’t know if you saw it, but.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, his eyes widening.  “Dude, you’re the one who found my music?  I was looking _everywhere_  for it, Scott at first said I probably left it in somewhere in the apartment, because our apartment’s such a mess that a whole folder could be buried and neither of us know, but I take better care of my music than that.”

Kira grabs the folder from her backpack and holds it out to him.  “I can see why,” she says.  “It’s… I hope it isn’t weird that I looked, but, like.  I liked it.”

“See anything you were interested in?” Stiles asks.  “A lot of it’s not quite done, or needs some tweaking.  A lot of tweaking.  I lost my eraser last time I was working, and Scott just _had_  to go shower before class, so I didn’t get to listen to some of the parts.  I mean, the violin parts are solid.  The violin parts are always solid.”

“I don’t know much about violin,” Kira admits.  “But I liked the trumpet stuff.  And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a piece where there was that extensive of a trumpet and violin duet, that was, a… pretty interesting choice.”

“You play trumpet?” Stiles asks.  “I’ve been looking for someone to play this with.  I don’t spend much time away from my orchestra friends, outside of Scott.  Is your trumpet here?”

“No,” Kira admits.  “I left it at home.”  Stiles’ face falls, and Kira’s actually pretty disappointed.  Malia maybe might be a little bit right about the music crush thing, and now that she’s seen what Stiles actually _looks like_ …

“I can play the violin part for you?” Stiles asks.  “So you can hear how it sounds.  And I can let you take it home and look at it, and you can come up here in a few days and we can test it out.”

“You’d just trust me with your music?” Kira asks.

“I could threaten you with what I’ll do if you don’t bring it back,” Stiles offers.  “But you brought it back this time.”

“I did,” Kira agrees.  “It’s your music.  You worked hard on that.”

“Right,” Stiles agrees.  “Then just don’t screw it up.”

Stiles plays the song for her, and the longer he plays and Kira watches his long arm extend, one hand holding his bow and the other pressing down on the strings in a way Kira can’t follow but Stiles seems to feel instinctively, Kira thinks that maybe she’s in over her head.  She can feel the way the music comes to life when he plays, the way it means more than just the notes on the page, even when it’s incomplete.  Kira feels like she’s been given a huge responsibility, being entrusted with Stiles’ and Scott’s music.

She decides she likes, it, though.  She’s excited to take the music to her little practice room and to learn it, to hear the unconventional mix of sounds.  It could be a total wash, but it could be something great, something fun.

Either way, it’s going to give her more time with the mysterious Stiles Stilinski, and she thinks that, maybe, that’s not gonna be a bad thing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).


End file.
